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William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats Quotes

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Famous William Butler Yeats Quotes

“A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set.”

IfsDoeHas BeensMomentsSeemsTogetherSoundHoursLinesBreakSweetHard WorkStonesHarderBonesKitchenWork HarderNoisyPavementMarrowIdlers
Book:Later Poems
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“Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.”

IfsHumansSpeakHuman BeingsBoysViolenceDogPoliticianStonesCatSellsAddCharityContemptOppressedOrganizeOppressorsGood Politicians
Book:A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats
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“All art that is not mere storytelling, or mere portraiture, is symbolic, and has the purpose of those symbolic talismans which medieval magicians made with complex colours and forms, and bade their patients ponder over daily, and guard with holy secrecy; for it entangles, in complex colours and forms, a part of the Divine Essence.”

ArtMadeFormPurposeDivineHolyEssenceMereComplexesPatientStorytellingColourMagicianSecrecyMedievalSymbolicPonderingPortraitureTalismans
Author:William Butler Yeats
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“I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.”

KnowsWayStillsReasonDreamBodyCertainImaginationVisionSilentCommandmentsLightingBinding
Book:The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays
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“To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through the care of children to the hour Forbidding Fate and Time and Change goodbye.”

WayFeelsHeartChildrenLongCareYoungHoursWatchesFireFateDrinkWineSmokeExcellentBoardsGoodbyeOld WaysGood WineTurfTime And Change
Book:When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales
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“If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers.”

IfsWorldHeartSpiritDesirePowerfulDestinyRecordsThis WorldHistoricalSpeculationBenevolent
Book:The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays
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“Had there been no Renaissance and no Italian influence to bring in the stories of other lands English history would, it may be, have become as important to the English imagination as the Greek Myths to the Greek imagination; and many plays by many poets would have woven it into a single story whose contours, vast as those of Greek myth, would have made living men and women seem like swallows building their nests under the architrave of some Temple of the Giants.”

MenMayMadeImportantPlayStoriesSeemsImaginationInfluenceLandBuildingPoetMen And WomenMythGreekGiantsTemplesItalianNestsRenaissanceWovenEnglish HistoryGreek Myth
Book:The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays
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“Great literature has always been written in a like spirit, and is, indeed, the Forgiveness of Sin, and when we find it becoming the Accusation of Sin, as in George Eliot, who plucks her Tito in pieces with as much assurance as if he had been clockwork, literature has begun to change into something else.”

IfsSpiritLiteratureSinPiecesWrittenBecomingAssuranceAccusationPluckClockworkEliotGreat LiteratureForgiveness Of SinsTito
Book:Ideas of Good and Evil
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“All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.”

IfsWorldMindSoulSidesMemoriesOpinionRichHabitBuiltEmptyInstinctExtremesInstanceSooner Or LaterProbabilityPropositionsStrainAffrontEmpty Souls
Book:Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats
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